Hossein Amini
Hossein Amini (born 18 January 1966) is an Iranian-born British screenwriter and film director who has worked as a screenwriter since the early 1990s. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Wings of the Dove (1997). He also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association for his screenplay adaptation of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), based on the novel by James Sallis.
Hossein Amini
- Name
- Hossein Amini
- Born
- 18 January 1966
- Birthplace
- Tehran, Imperial State of Iran
- Education
- Wadham College, Oxford
- Occupation
- Screenwriter, film director
- Nationality
- Iran.
- Fields
- writing.
- Languages
- Persian.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Hossein Amini (born 18 January 1966) is an Iranian-born British screenwriter and film director who has worked as a screenwriter since the early 1990s. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Wings of the Dove (1997). He also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association for his screenplay adaptation of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), based on the novel by James Sallis.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
Hossein Amini (born 1966) is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. The film director was born in Tehran.
Hossein Amini studied at Bryanston School and Wadham College. The film director is a member of Writers Guild of America West. Hossein Amini is active in writing. Languages used include Persian.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Hossein Amini. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
not yet certified
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q1371315 · wikipedia · Hossein Amini
In this article
Biography
Biography
For his directorial debut, he both wrote and directed The Two Faces of January, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Hossein Amini • Born — 18 January 1966 • Birthplace — Tehran, Imperial State of Iran • Education — Wadham College, Oxford • Occupation — Screenwriter, film director
Early life, family and education
Early life, family and education
Born in Tehran, Imperial State of Iran, Amini spent his early life and attended the British School in Tehran. When he was 11 years old, he and his family moved to England. Amini attended Bryanston School, a public school in Dorset, and won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read history and modern languages.
Screenplays
Screenplays
Amini's first screenplay was for the 1994 TV movie The Dying of the Light, directed by Peter Kosminsky. The TV movie told the story of Sean Devereux, an aid worker who was murdered in Somalia in 1993 for criticising arms sales. It was nominated for the "Best Single Drama" at the British Academy Television Awards. Amini also wrote an adapted screenplay of the 1895 novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Producer Andrew Eaton commissioned the screenplay in 1995, and it was filmed by Michael Winterbottom as Jude, released in 1996. Amini also wrote a screenplay for another TV movie, Deep Secrets, which aired in 1996. Amini wrote the adapted screenplay for The Wings of the Dove, which was based on the 1902 novel of the same name by Henry James. The film, directed by Iain Softley, was released in 1997 and received critical acclaim. Amini was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay. Amini was one of the screenwriters, along with Michael Schiffer, who wrote a screenplay adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's novel The Four Feathers, which became the film The Four Feathers (2002), directed by Shekhar Kapur and starring Wes Bentley and Heath Ledger. In 2008, he adapted the Elmore Leonard novel Killshot into the screenplay for the film Killshot (2008), directed by John Madden and starring Thomas Jane, Diane Lane, Mickey Rourke, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Rosario Dawson. In 2010, Amini wrote an original screenplay for a film entitled Shanghai directed by Mikael Håfström and starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Ken Watanabe and John Cusack. Amini also wrote the screenplay for the neo-noir film Drive (2011), directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. His screenplay for the film is a loose adaptation of the novel of the same name by James Sallis. During interviews, Refn noted that he and Amini cut out a lot of the content from Sallis' book, resulting in the almost bare-bones structure for the film, and the few lines of dialogue for the film's star, Ryan Gosling. For his screenplay of Drive, Amini also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association in 2011. Amini was one of the screenwriters, along with Evan Daughtery and John Lee Hancock, who wrote the screenplay for Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth and Charlize Theron. Additionally, Amini is one of the screenwriters, along with Chris Morgan and Walter Hamada, who wrote the screenplay for the film 47 Ronin (2013), directed by Carl Rinsch and starring Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Rinko Kikuchi. Amini adapted John le Carré's novel Our Kind of Traitor into a feature film, directed by Susanna White. The film was released in 2016, starring Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris, and Stellan Skarsgård. He then adapted The Snowman, from the novel by Jo Nesbø. It was a box office disappointment and received negative reviews, with critics calling it "clichéd and uninvolving." In 2018, Amini began writing for television, with the crime series McMafia and The Alienist. On 27 September 2019, it was announced that Amini would be writing the Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series for Disney+ but he departed before production.
Directorial work
Directorial work
His feature directorial debut, The Two Faces of January (2014), is a film adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel for which he also wrote the screenplay. The film stars Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac.
Television
Television
• Year — Title — Writer — Executive producer — Creator — Notes • 1992 — The Dying of the Light — TV movie • 1996 — Deep Secrets • 2018 — McMafia — 8 episodes • The Alienist — 3 episodes • 2022 — Obi-Wan Kenobi — 4 episodes
Films
• Year — Title — Director — Writer • 1989 — Catch (short film) • 1996 — Jude • 1997 — The Wings of the Dove • 2002 — The Four Feathers • Gangs of New York — Uncredited • 2008 — Killshot • 2010 — Shanghai • 2011 — Drive • 2012 — Snow White and the Huntsman • 2013 — 47 Ronin • 2014 — The Two Faces of January • 2016 — Our Kind of Traitor • 2017 — The Snowman • 2026 — Clayface • TBA — Ibelin
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Aftab, Kaleem. Hossein Amini: how I coped with adapting the book Drive for Hollywood. The National. 15 September 2011.
- 2.Debretts. People of Today. 24 November 2011.
- 3.British Film Institute. Kosminsky, Peter (1956–). Screenonline.
- 4.British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Television Nominations 1994.
- 5.Jackson, Andrew. A Wessex tale of Auld Reekie. The Independent. 6 December 1995.
- 6.Mars–Jones, Adam. Hardier than the rest: Jude. The Independent. 3 October 1996.
- 7.Dyja, Eddie. BFI Film and Television Handbook 1997. British Film Institute. 342. 1998. 978-0-85170-637-5.
- 8.Denerstein, Robert. Director a sucker for James' complexity. Rocky Mountain News. 23 October 1997.
- 9.Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Official Academy Awards® Database.
- 10.Giles, Jeff. Only the Brave Is a Powerful Tribute. Rotten Tomatoes. 19 October 2017.
- 11.McMafia. AMC.
- 12.Megan Vick. TNT's The Alienist Doesn't Have to Be a Limited Series. TV Guide. January 11, 2018.
- 13.Cynthia Littleton. The Alienist Premiere Brings Gilded Touch to Paramount Backlot. Variety. January 12, 2018.
- 14.Obi-Wan Kenobi TV Series Finds Director (Exclusive). The Hollywood Reporter. 27 September 2019.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q1371315: Hossein AminiWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Film memorabilia
37,408 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Horst SchulzePerson
- Horst SöhnleinPerson
- Horst TappertPerson
- Hosameldin MostafaPerson
- Hou Hsiao-HsienPerson
- Hou YaoPerson
- Hou YongPerson
- Houda BenyaminaPerson
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Hossein Amini?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.